All Articles

Discrete Mathematics Seminar: Travis Peters: LIGHTS OUT! on Cartesian Products

Author:

Travis Peters: LIGHTS OUT! on Cartesian Products

The game LIGHTS OUT! is played on a 5x55x5 square grid of buttons; each button may be on or off. Pressing a button changes the on/off state of the light of the button pressed and of all its vertical and horizontal neighbors. Given an initial configuration of buttons that are on, the object of the game is to turn all the lights out. The game can be generalized to arbitrary graphs.

The Discrete Mathematics Seminar at Iowa State University is an eclectic mix of topics, including graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra and abstract algebra. Presentations vary with the speaker and include the speaker’s research, related research by others, and expository talks. Many of the expository talks (typically labeled as “Introduction to”) are suitable for interested faculty and graduate students who are not specialists in the area.

See [website][1] for more details.

[1]: http://orion.math.iastate.edu/dept/seminar/dmseminar.htm